[vlc-devel] [Videolan-devel] Bittorrent VoD

[Andre-John Mas]

On 22-Dec-2009, at 15:22, Marijn Swenne wrote:

> Thanks for all the responses, I really appreciate it.
> 
> Yes, a segmented approach has been tried with somewhat promising
> results (but liveBT had better results):
> 
> Is High-Quality VoD Feasible using P2P Swarming.pdf
> 
> And all these different ways of deciding which piece to download from
> what place is what I call the "piece & peer picker policy" (4P). And
> even tho you don't dictate the 4P that other peers use, it does
> influence both you own and the swarm's performance.
> 
> But, if the http stream works with segmented downloads (as apposed to
> a sliding window or serial download), I might be able to use is as a
> base.

From what I remember Apple's specification segments the media and then
in the "playlist" specifies the time offsets for each segment. This means
that if you fast forward then it will skip any segments not yet loaded and
not needed to display the time frame you need to display.

What I like about it is that it builds upon existing technologies, so
this makes it much easier to implement using what is available and some
tweaking. At the same time I can see reasons for evolving the design
for various purposes.
 
André-John